The latest data shows that the leading challenge for B2B companies is generating high-quality leads. Generating high-quality leads is becoming more difficult through traditional channels such as print advertisements and tradeshows. As a result, building a dynamic website that is the centerpiece to the lead generation process is now of critical importance. Let’s delve further into how effective website design drives lead generation for companies across San Jose, CA.
Target your ideal customer
Effective web design for lead generation allows your B2B company to target the ideal customer — the customer that will offer the most value to your business over the long-term. In fact, you can optimize the design of your site to highlight elements most attractive to your target customer. For example, if your target customer is a CFO looking at bottom-line ROI, you can use the site design and messaging to highlight the financial benefits of your product or service.
Capitalize on analytics
The best site designs capitalize on analytics to streamline the conversion process for each visitor. Using a foundation of analytics to make your design decisions, you can pinpoint the pages where most people are leaving the site, and then optimize these pages for greater levels of engagement. A/B testing should be used to test your potential designs and determine which options provide the best return for your company.
Strengthen your calls to action
With the average B2B customer skipping over calls to action (CTAs) with little tangible value, it’s more important than ever to create effective CTAs that deliver value to customers who are at various stages of the sales funnel. B2B customers want to know more about your product and your industry, and you can use the clear language of your call to action to promote newsletters and product demonstrations throughout your site. An effective web design should prominently feature these CTAs on your website.
Link web design elements to your social media
Social media is increasingly playing a more important role in B2B lead generation. B2B customers respond positively with personal touches only achieved via social media. So, it’s important that social media touchpoint is spread throughout your site. By using savvy design techniques to bridge the gap between your company’s website and its social media pages, you can diversify your lead generation strategy and build a closer connection with your target B2B customers from San Jose, CA to the entire United States.
One of the biggest mistakes brands, web designers, and marketers make is failing to employ a lead generation strategy on their website.
For a website to be an active digital marketing tool, it needs to do more than just explain who you are and what you do. It needs to lead prospects down the path toward doing business with you and give audiences a way to take action. It needs to have a lead generation strategy.
A lead generation strategy encourages website visitors to give you valuable information such as their name, email address, and phone number. You can then take that information to nurture the leads and guide them through the rest of their buyer’s journey.
Every website should have a lead generation strategy so it can actively connect you with potential customers and prospects. So if your website isn’t optimized for lead generation and you’re making this costly website mistake, here are a few ways you can fix it.
Create an enticing opt-in offer.
The most effective lead generation strategy doesn’t simply ask prospects for their contact information; it gives audiences a compelling reason to share their information. They present an enticing opt-in offer that encourages a prospect to sign up.
So, the first step in optimizing your website for lead generation and inbound marketing is coming up with an appealing opt-in offer. Consider your target audience and develop an offer they won’t be able to resist.
Some ideas for what you can offer include:
Newsletter Subscriptions
Content Upgrades
Webinars
Discounts or Offers
Ebooks or Whitepapers
Case Studies
VIP, Community or Group Access
Add an opt-in form.
Once you have your opt-in incentive, you must set up a system so audiences can pass over their information and receive your offer. You need an opt-in form.
To create an opt-in form, you should us an email marketing software (like MailChimp, ConvertKit, etc.) or a customer relationship management tool (like Hubspot, InfusionSoft, etc.). Those systems enable you to collect user information, create profiles for your contacts, track details about them, and send mass emails.
Once you have a tool for collecting and managing contacts, use it to create a lead generation opt-in form for your website, and add it to the places where audiences are most likely to see it.
You can place your opt-in form in a few locations around your website.
Hello Bar: Place a thin content box across the top of your website that guides users to your opt-in.
Sidebar: Add a box to the side of your main content. It’s important to note that sidebar boxes may be less effective as they are often bumped to the bottom of a page when a site is viewed on a mobile device.
End of Posts and Pages: Add a call-to-action that directs readers to the opt-in at the end of each of your pages and posts.
Footer: At the bottom of your website on every page, include a box with your opt-in offer.
Promote your opt-in.
Having a great opt-in won’t do you any good unless people know about it. So the next step is promoting your offer to draw people to your website and opt-in form.
Blog Content: Mention your opt-in in the body of your blog post content or guest post content.
Guest Post Author Bios: If you provide content to another blog or website, mention your opt-in in your author bio.
Pop-ups: Remind readers about your opt-in by promoting it through on-site pop-ups. But, if you use them, make sure you follow Google’s best practices for mobile interstitials.
Social Media Profiles: Promote your opt-in using social media cover photos, by adding links to your opt-in on your profile pages, and using pinned posts.
Paid Social Media Ads: Pay to promote your opt-in on social media sites by using targeted ads.
Test until you get it right.
Any lead generation strategy is better than no strategy at all. But, you shouldn’t throw together one opt-in and call it a day.
To get the most out of a lead generation system on your website, you should constantly test, track, and revise your strategy. Use A/B testing to find out which offer, copy, button colors, and graphics attract the most leads.
Get even more out of your lead generation strategy.
This is just the beginning of what you can do to optimize your site for lead generation.
For even more tips and strategies on how to build an effective plan for collecting high-quality, hot leads, get our free ebook. This FREE guide will show you how to give your prospects exactly what they need so you can attract and convert more leads through your website.
Have you looked at your company’s website lately? Did you ever think that web visitors might occasionally get frustrated? Website Redesign Usability is critical. It can make the difference between performing a task accurately and completely or not finishing it at all; enjoying the process or being frustrated.
Don’t guess at how people are using your site. In most cases, a properly executed website redesign usability test will uncover two key things:
Areas of confusing navigation. There is no doubt that your web design team knows how your site navigation functions. But does a new user know this? It is important to realize that about an hour into designing your project, your team has probably lost all perspective on how the interface appears to others.
Roadblocks in the flow or delivery of information. Not everyone in your audience may know that the e-mail address for the author is at the end of the text or that the panoramic photograph moves when the arrows on either side are clicked. What seems normal and natural to the designer is not always so with the user.
Overview of Creating Your Own Website Redesign Usability Test
5 TIPS FOR CREATING YOUR OWN WEBSITE REDESIGN USABILITY TEST
1. Develop a strong web redesign strategy
2. Develop your questions and answers for better web practices
3. Conduct your usability test to improve your web redesign
4. Gather data for User Insights for your website redesign
5. Analyze data & list potential website improvements
Choose tasks. Determine at least ten (but no more than 15) tasks that a user should be able to successfully execute to get the most out of your website. Carefully select tasks based on what actual users of the site would do.
Test sooner rather than later. No web designer wants to make changes to something they believe is in its final form. Schedule your usability test in the beta stage of a site redesign — not quite finalized, but final enough so someone can navigate the site.
Do not test your colleagues. Anyone already familiar with your website or your company does not represent a typical visitor. In an ideal world, test subjects are recruited through a marketing research firm. Bottom line: try to solicit representative test subjects that are as close to typical users as possible.
2. Develop your questions and answers for better web practices
Pre-experiment questions. Give some context to the results and help you understand the web practices of your test subjects by asking them to quantify the amount of time they spend online. You also may want to ask questions that gauge their interest in the subject of the website you are testing.
Post-experiment questions. Administer a written questionnaire, once all tasks are completed, that asks users to rank their success with the site.
Interview questions. Plan a few open-format interview questions to ask each participant at the end of the session. These should elicit more overall, qualitative impressions of the website.
3. Conduct your usability test to improve your web redesign
Start with a welcome. Do your best to put users at ease by thanking them, offering them a cup of coffee, or just chatting with them for a few minutes. Remind them that it is the website that is being tested, not them.
Free observation time. Allow users to explore the site with no interaction from the tester. You simply direct the user to the site and step back. The only instruction should be for users to “Explore the site for as long as they would like.” Here is where you can either videotape their behavior or take copious notes.
Assigned tasks. Using the list you created, ask users to execute your preferred tasks. Have tasks ordered and prioritized, skipping over any that were completed during the free observation time.
Post experiment questionnaire and discussion. Have users fill out your questionnaire. Once complete, talk with them to cover open-ended questions.
4. Gather data for User Insights for your website redesign
Know what you are looking for during the free observation period. Carefully observe each session and take notes about the participants’ interactions with the site. Which tasks were performed successfully? What problems occurred?
Pay close attention to the steps users take to complete tasks. You want to discern the path that is clear and most natural for users when completing tasks. Ideally, they all will complete tasks in fairly predictable ways. But if they do not, you can learn something by the “mistakes” they make and how they recover.
Be as unobtrusive as possible. It may take them some time for them to get used to your presence, but once they do, they will become more relaxed and their behaviors will be more realistic and natural.
The first benefit of a web page’s title is that it should communicate to your visitors a lot of information about that unique page on your site. Viewers quickly determine if they’re on a page that answered their query sufficiently. Remember that your page’s title and descriptive introduction not also displays on page, but on Google’s knowledge graph in the search results pages. When people see a list of options garnered by a search engine, they read the page title to determine which page they want to click on and read. After, preparing your visual presentation, this alone is a good enough reason to spend a little time optimizing your page titles.
5. Analyze data & list potential website improvements
Average all quantifiable responses. Break down the number of men versus women, the average age of participants, etc. Be sure the demographics match your audience.
Look at the observation notes in light of quantifiable data. If users ranked navigational controls as weak, what behaviors during the free observation period support this?
Look at the success/failure to complete usability tasks. Go back and determine what common behaviors were exhibited by users when asked to complete certain tasks. Did they become confused at the same points?
All good designers and developers realize the importance of usability for their work. Usable websites offer great user experiences, and great user experiences lead to happy customers. Delight and satisfy your visitors, rather than frustrate and annoy them, with smart design decisions. – Smashing Magazine
Conclusion
Make a list of at the top three things that should not change and the top three things that should. Look at user suggestions for improvement in light of the changes you need to make.
Costly website mistakes may be limiting the effectiveness of your business website, which should legitimize your company, help people find you online, and market your products and services. But when you get to the core of your website’s purpose, it really does one primary thing.
Your business website helps you make money.
Your website should attract audiences, collect leads, convert prospects, and generate sales. But, it can’t do any of those things if you are making these costly website mistakes.
#1) Your Website Is Not Mobile-Friendly
More and more web audiences are stepping away from their computers and using mobile devices as their primary tool for browsing the web. If your website isn’t optimized for those audiences, you could be pushing away a lot of potential customers. You must use a responsive, mobile-friendly website design (that adjusts to fit the user’s screen size) if you want to appeal to all potential customers online, not just the ones using desktop browsers.
#2) Your Content Is Shallow (or Non-Existent)
Many businesses think that just having a website is enough. They launch a homepage and few pages of content and believe their website will start working for them. But, this is one of the most costly website mistakes. Potential customers visit your website to learn about your brand, products, and services. If you don’t offer detailed content that helps them find the information they seek, they are probably going to leave your website without coming closer to doing business with you.
#3) You Don’t Tell Audiences What to Do
Your website’s purpose is to drive sales. For it to do that, it must act like a salesperson. It must guide users from interest to conversion by using persuasive and direct language. Each of your webpages should use clear call-to-actions that tell audiences what to do. It should lead them through the buyer’s journey by offering directions to the next phrase. If you fail to include directions on each page, you are making costly website mistakes because you risk losing audiences and potential sales.
#4) You Don’t Have a Lead Magnet
Because your website is an unpaid, 24/7 salesperson, it should always be working for your business. One way it can do that is by constantly collecting contact information from your audience. Your website should have an engaging lead magnet that encourages audiences to provide their contact information in exchange for something valuable from your business. If you aren’t using your website as a way to collect leads and trigger email marketing sales funnels, it’s a costly website mistake. You could be wasting your web traffic and missing out on sales opportunities.
#5) You Aren’t Retargeting Website Visitors
If a user visits your website and leaves without becoming a lead or paying customer, all is not lost. You can use their website visit as a door for connecting with the audience again on another platform. By adding retargeting codes from Facebook and Google, you can tag users who visit your website and create ads that reconnect with them on other websites. This allows you to leverage connections with users who have already shown interest in your business.
#6) Your Checkout Page Doesn’t Look Secure
If a user is ready to make an online purchase, there is a website mistake that could stop them. If your website’s checkout page doesn’t look secure, you can scare off users even if they really want to make a purchase. Stop users from abandoning their cart by using security features like an SSL certificate and trust and security badges.
#7) You’re Driving Paid Traffic to Generic Pages
The most costly website mistakes are actively funneling money into strategies that won’t produce ideal results. If you’re paying for traffic through sponsored social posts or search engine marketing but driving audiences to generic web pages, you could be wasting your money in this way. Instead of driving users to basic info pages, drive traffic to landing pages that are created specifically for the ad you created and the audience you targeted. Drive paid traffic to hyper-targeted pages to increase your conversions.
Stop Making Costly Website Mistakes
Your website’s core purpose is to help you initiate sales and make more money. But, it can’t do that if you are making these costly website mistakes.
To see even more ways that you could be losing money by sending users off your site without converting them into customers, check out our post How to Lower Your Website’s Bounce Rate. It offers tips for lowering the bounce rate on your website so you can keep users on the page and on their way to becoming paying customers.
A lot of work and strategy goes into getting new visitors to land on your website.
So when a user visits your site, the last thing you want to happen is for them to leave or “bounce” away. You want them to stay on the page, learn about your business and your offerings, and enter their information to become a lead.
To accomplish that, use the following tips to keep audiences on your site longer, lower your website’s bounce rate, and increase your odds of turning visitors into valuable, high-quality leads.
Make a Good First Impression
When a user visits your website, they are going to make an instant, snap judgment based on what they see.
It’s that split-second judgment that can cause a new user to bounce off your website or stay and form a connection with your business. To lower your website’s bounce rate and ensure that users stick around, you must have:
Contemporary website design. An outdated site looks untrustworthy and out-of-touch, and it will quickly send users off the page. Use a website design that employs fresh, modern layouts and functionality.
High-quality photos. Avoid using cheesy stock photos, pixelated graphics, or clip-art style images. Stick with high-quality editorial-style photography and professional iconography.
Responsive layout. Use a responsive framework that changes based on the user’s screen size. This design not only provides a better user experience, it’s also an SEO best practice.
White space that breaks up the page. Don’t overload website visitors with content when they open your webpages. Use whitespace to spread out copy blocks and images to make the content easy to consume.
Easy-to-read copy formatting. Also format long-form copy with design elements like bold text, short paragraphs, subheadings, sections, and bullet points to make text easy to read.
Don’t Annoy Visitors
Something else that quickly pushes users off your site is an annoying experience. You can’t quickly turn off (and turn away) website visitors by bothering or irritating them. So ditch bad site habits to lower your website’s bounce rate.
Speed up your site load speed. Website visitors want immediate gratification. They don’t want to wait for a webpage to load. Kissmetrics reported that “47% of consumers expect a website to load in two second or less,” and “40% of people abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load.” Measure your site speed, and make necessary changes to improve loading time if necessary.
Use clear, intuitive navigation. If a website user is confused by a website, they aren’t going to stick around and try to figure it out. They are going to leave. So, use navigational menus and content that clearly tells audiences what they need to know and where they need to go.
Avoid disruptive pop-up and autoplay ads. Don’t immediately bombard website visitors with digital advertising right when they get to your site. If you want to use pop-up and autoplay ads, delay their appearance to give users time to view your site before receiving your promotional messages.
Don’t Guide Users Off the Page
If you want to lower your website’s bounce rate and keep users on the page, don’t tell them to leave.
While that may seem obvious, there are a few small errors you could be making to push audiences off your page. To get users to stay:
Include a call-to-action on every page. When users get to the bottom of a webpage, give them a reason to stick around by including a call-to-action that tells them what to do next. Guide users to the next page of information that will offer what they need and keep them on their buyer’s journey.
Don’t send users to another website. While it’s good to link to other sites as resources and references, you don’t want to directly push audiences to other third-party sites. Don’t use call-to-actions that send audiences to other websites.
Set outbound links to open in a new window. When you include links to outbound sites, make sure audiences don’t ditch your website to view the other site. Set outbound links to open in a new window so your website remains open on their browser.
Attract the Right Traffic
The final key to keeping users on your site is attracting the right audience in the first place. Users frequently ditch a site if it doesn’t offer what they need.
Always remember, it’s not just about driving a large quantity of traffic to your site; it’s about driving the right quality of traffic to your site. To target the right audience and lower your website’s bounce rate:
Match keywords and content with intent. Consider why an audience would want to find your landing pages, and use keywords that match that intent. Decide if a user would have informational, transactional, or navigational intent and use keywords, page titles, and meta descriptions that align with those needs.
Match the content to your page titles. If you make a promise with your page titles and descriptions, deliver with the content. Don’t trick audiences into visiting your page and then let them down by not proving what you promised and what they expected.
Seed your content in the right places. Take time to get to know your target audience and where they spend time online. Use strategic content promotion planning to only seed your content in the places where they are likely to it, and avoid placing your content on sites or social networks your audience rarely visits.
When you use these tactics, you not only lower your website’s bounce rate, you also attract better, higher quality traffic.
And when you attract the right traffic, you find and convert more high-quality leads.
You do a lot of work to get audiences to your webpages. So don’t lose that momentum once users get to your site. Use these tips to keep users on the page and on their path to becoming a valuable lead.
For even more tips on optimizing your online presence and improving your lead generation process, download this FREE guide.
An effective website design is crucial to your company’s digital branding and effective internet marketing strategy. Today’s website acts as an online hub, providing visitors from all channels with the valuable information, credibility, branding, positioning, and persuasive messaging that is crucial to driving more traffic, leads, and sales. How can you know if your website is just limping along or if it is a lead-generating competitive tool to engage with prospects?
Deep Dish Web Redesign Tastes Better and Is More Filling
In part 2 of Deep Dish Website Design, I want to cover the different areas where a website may be looking thin or exhibiting deeper problems. While some of the website design changes are relatively easy to make, others require a deep dish redesign.
Website Design and Usability
Thin Issues Existing in a Current Website Design
Each page of my product copy is longer than two scrolls (clicks).
I have more than two animations on my home page.
I waste a key content block on my home page for a company overview.
I don’t provide my company address on my Contact Us page.
Deeper Problems Some Website Designs Encounter
I have different website designs in different areas of my website, due to acquisitions, and mixed platforms.
My text blocks are wider than 500 pixels, causing eye strain.
My search bar doesn’t offer advanced search options to filter results.
I launched my website without conducting at least a rudimentary usability study.
A Website Design’s Information Architecture and Navigation
Thin Issues
My information architecture replicates the organization hierarchy of my company.
My navigation is riddled with cliché categories, such as Products, Services, Support and About Us.
My link styles for active, hover, and visited are not evident to the average web visitor.
Deeper Problems
I have important information buried three levels deep.
I don’t use breadcrumbs on interior pages to provide people with a visual navigation trail.
My secondary navigation appears in different places on different pages.
Content
Thin Issues
My web visitors have to search to find downloadable content.
My website copy uses cliches, jargon, and corporate speak.
I don’t have an active blog.
I don’t have a plan for keeping fresh content on my website.
Deeper Problems
My buyer personas are out of date
My website content is not tailored to my audience segments.
I don’t have a place on my website where visitors can self-identify themselves according to their job function, company size, or product interest.
My website design isn’t consistent with my branding.
Social Media
Thin Issues
My website design doesn’t accommodate an automatic feed for my social media posts.
It’s difficult for people to share my blog posts, content offers, and news releases.
My website visitors can’t easily tell which social media channels my company supports.
Deeper Problems
My social media channels are not consistent with my branding
Social media channels are not actively updated
My company pushes information out through social media channels but doesn’t listen.
Lead Generation
Thin Issues
My forms don’t automatically redirect to thank-you pages.
I don’t automatically send confirmation emails to administrators or prospects.
My landing pages ask for too much information from first-time visitors.
I don’t have calls to action at the bottom of every page.
I can’t track leads from phone calls.
Deeper Problems
My website forms send me contact names as emails instead of populating my CRM database.
I don’t know when someone fills out a form for the 2nd time.
I can’t prepopulate forms with information I already have.
I don’t use progressive profiling to gather more information about prospects.
My landing pages are not optimized with compelling calls to action, keywords or attractive, relevant visuals.
I don’t use A/B testing to test alternate headlines, copy, offers, and images on critical landing pages.
Search
Thin Issues
I stuff my footer with keywords.
My website copy is flawed with multiple H1 heads, or no H1 heads on important pages of my website.
I have not submitted an updated .xml site map to Google and Bing.
Deeper Problems
My site is not optimized for key search terms.
My website content doesn’t provide links to interior pages, or to outside URLs.
My content is written for search engines rather than web visitors.
HiveMind’s Professional Website Designers and Web Redesign Services can put your business online, get more sales and generate leads. Request an estimate today!
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